Red Ship Track-By-Track Breakdown

“Interchangeable”

This song was one of the few that came to me by way of vocal melody first while the rest of the album was initiated on drums. It felt like a complex confrontation, like aggression coupled with resignation, and I recalled the countless times I had to flatten myself as an Asian American doing sex work, through gritted teeth…having felt empowered at times yet shrunken or minimized other times.

I tracked scratch vocals and syncopated guitar, slightly dissonant, slightly bluesy, and sent to old collaborator TJ Lipple for drums. At the time, I hadn’t touched my drumkit in years and didn’t have a strong idea of how I wanted the rhythmic elements to show up except…maybe accentuate the guitar. He surprised me with a very decisive and anchoring beat, like he was holding space for my rage. I then enlisted Princessed bandmate Meagan Perkins to contribute bass, and the only direction I gave was to follow the guitar rhythm and make it ‘kind of dissonant’. I’m so thankful to those two for giving the song the fuel I didn’t know it needed.

“You’re Free”

I was inspired by a Fairuz recording of “Oudak Rannan”, a Lebanese traditional that got an update with Ziad Rahbani’s production. The distorted slap bass and machine gun-like percussion gave it a ‘menacing’ feel, which in retrospect was definitely an Orientalist filter I was listening through, as the lyrics are actually celebratory. I wanted to capture that feeling of danger.

I knew I wanted to write about the duality of sex work. As a society, we’re fixated on the vulnerability of the sex worker, especially if they’re femme or gender non-conforming. But the client is also incredibly emotionally vulnerable in this context, and I had the power to hurt as much as I could hold space or provide pleasure. “You’re free with me…” but you need to fucking pay, and when time’s up it’s fucking over.

“Before We’re Vaporized”

I’d been watching a show called Defying Gravity, which featured Ron Livingston as this astronaut on a mission to colonize Mars. The series started off with a big tragedy, and like a lot of sex workers with a savior complex, I fantasized about saving Ron Livingston’s character! I don’t even remember his character’s name. Starting off with a frenetic 5/4 beat on the drums, I felt the song needed a grandiose sweeping guitar melody for an exultant and otherworldly feel. Highly influenced by all the contemporary classical Lebanese and Egyptian music I’d recently been introduced to, I enlisted Jenny Petrow and Winston Yu to add cello and violin to give it that dramatic, emotionally apocalyptic urgency.

“Joy ‘09”

I was trying to figure out the drums to “Oh, Yeah!” by Babes in Toyland one day, and this came out instead. This might have been one of the songs that was written slowly over various sessions at Inner Ear, the beat feeling like a real expression of joy. We called this the ‘kids running’ song, like it could have been the soundtrack to a PBS children’s show. The lyrics share small instances where I’d experienced profound joy, including a trip to Dahab, Egypt where I fell off an ATV. I was on my back, looking up at the clear blue desert sky, and thought, “If I could choose to fall off an ATV anywhere, it’d be here.”

“It Won’t Be Forever”

I grew up obsessed with ‘60s girls’ groups as a kid, and as I continued my dance studies, I noticed how similar the very maqsoum rhythm and its variations were to the “Be My Baby” beat! As I played around with the rhythm on a tabla, I kept coming back to a very Ronettes-inspired vocal melody, and lyrics came pouring out; lyrics about the angst and anxiety I felt whenever my spouse deployed with the US Air Force. It’s so very isolating when you’re a military spouse critical of the military-industrial complex…after all, how could I really believe the whole ‘fighting for freedom’ thing when the US bombed my parents’ home country.

It might have been a memory of “Soldier Boy” by the Shirelles that ignited the idea, because when this song was written he’d been retired for several years already. I got TJ to interpret the beat on the kit because at the time I didn’t have access to my drums. It might have been a year before I finally got to tracking guitar and being in a different headspace, I’d been stim listening to Marquee Moon, over and over again. I layered guitar after guitar, wholly inspired by Tom Verlaine. I fell in love with guitar again with this song.

“Anonymous Tom”

I’d actually had this vocal melody kicking around since the Everyone Wore White sessions but never had the motivation to flesh out the arrangement until I started dancing. I’d been obsessed with the masmoudi sogheyer rhythm (similar to maqsoum and nawari, two Arabic rhythms I spent a lot of time with on this record) and when I sat down to play it on drums, this melody came back, and it felt perfect. In the original Inner Ear sessions, then DC-based percussionist N Scott Robinson played some riqq (Arabic tambourine), and for the revamp, I enlisted George Sadak for tabla and doholla, who I danced with often in the Seattle area. What I love about Arabic percussion is how humble each instrument is while the playing can get super intricate and complex.

“My Lai to Rafah”

My parents were refugees from the Vietnam War, aka the American War. Out of all the ongoing atrocities caused by the US foreign policy of my lifetime, Palestine feels the most personal, and I wanted to explore why - why have my intergenerational wounds been feeling that much more acute ever since October 7th? Aside from the fact that this latest round has been the most public, the most blatant acts of unapologetic genocide, aside from the fact that as a mother it should not be mere privilege to witness my kids grow while their peers across the globe live under such horrific violence.

This song taps into sacred rage, an indictment of the Eurocentric cultural norms, the resource-grabbing, manifest destiny BS that allows for this violence. Musically, it revolves around my interpretation of the nawari rhythm, which I was introduced to when studying Dabke, a traditional dance popular in the Levant region, including Palestine. Watching people dabke collectively, in community, and in this geopolitical context, is incredibly life-affirming to witness.

“Xin Cho Toi ("May I Have") by Trinh Cong Son”

I'd long felt I could not meet my ancestors' expectations, that I did not achieve enough to make their suffering, my parents' suffering as Viet refugees, worth it. After my 2nd child was born the ideation had gotten so severe, I sought out a psychedelic ceremony to address it. At the peak of the trip, I asked to hear this song and as it played, an ancestral figure held me, telling me that all they wanted was for me to "enjoy clear skies without bombs falling", that my joy was what they wanted, that the model minority myth did not originate with them, that I could stop trying to prove myself.

This was an anti-war song by Vietnamese composer Trinh Cong Son, one of many by him that my parents listened to often in my childhood. In my reimagination of it, I opted for a blues grunge-punk feel to make an anti-capitalist, anti-hustle culture statement, modeling the structure after a Khanh Ly recording from the ‘60s. I've not experienced such ideation since.

“Evy Reina”

Evy and I worked at an agency together as sex workers. Everyone was primed to be on the defensive because of the predatory nature of the industry, but I felt safest around her - she was sincere and super sweet, and her stories from her life in Colombia were moving. It wasn’t long after she started working with us, however, that she was found deceased in a hotel room. We never learned the cause of death, but I had a feeling that because she was a sex worker who may or may not have been undocumented, her death was not taken seriously by the authorities. This song was my tribute to her.

“xoxo”

Like a lot of Red Ship tracks, I started drums first, inspired by an old 1970s Bollywood song I’d heard but cannot for the life of me remember the name or artist! It’s about the deliciousness of an unrequited crush, the safety of fantasy. I only wanted to enjoy this person from afar, and to celebrate this bittersweetness with lush strings and flute, completely embracing this adolescent ‘hurt so good’ feeling. The rest of the album has a certain dissonance throughout so there was a concern that this song wouldn’t fit. Meh, who cares.